Day 6 - Friday, January 10, 2025 – Panama Canal Transit

We decided to get up early because we entered the Panama Canal about 7:00 at the first bridge called Atlantic bridge. It was not completely up and ready when we passed under this first bridge, but we got pictures of it. Shortly thereafter, we went to the first set of locks called Gatun Locks. I will try to get as many pictures as I can uploaded to the site. Unfortunately, with the Internet on the ship uploading pictures isn't that straightforward. I'm thinking of other ideas, but for now I will do my best to get some pictures uploaded. The pictures that we caught were all from the starboard side. This means we got pictures of the mules or locomotives that guide the ships through the canal. On the port side they only got to see what was on the other side of the canal. We made our way through the first set of locks which took us up two steps up to Gatun Lake. A little after noon we passed under another bridge called the Centennial bridge. Then we entered the Pedro Miguel blocks. This was a single lock going down. About an hour later, we entered the Miraflores Locks. This was another double set of locks which took us down to the level of the Pacific. We passed number one more bridge call the Bridge of America's before we were officially in the Pacific Ocean. The entire transit took about 8 hours.

That completed our second trip through the canal. We did one other trip where we went into the lake and came back so I guess you would call that half a transit through the canal. If I get the pictures and videos uploaded you will see the ship going up and down through the canal. The mules guide the ships. They don't pull the ship. I would have to look at the history, but I would say somewhere in our past they actually pulled the ship through. Anyway, it was cool to see.

The other thing that you can only experience first hand is the heat and humidity. Having lived in Florida for five years now and lived through countless Midwest summers where the heat and humidity can get nasty, nothing compares to the Panama heat and humidity. Soupy is a good word. Breathing is a challenge and the sun instantly burns the skin – the nape of my neck is proof.

We went through what they call the Historic Locks. This simply means the old locks. Some of the pictures you can see a ship up higher than us going through what are the new locks. I do not know why we went through the old locks versus the new. Our next trip will have to be through the new locks. I will just have to talk to the captain. I will just have to tell him that I am married to Mary Welti. That should be enough pull. 😊

In some of the pictures you will see the ship ahead of us in the other lock. It's called the Sunshine Ace. Using the IMO number, we were able to look it up. It is a car carrier from Japan. The way it was sitting on the water made me think that it was an empty ship. The water line was pretty high. The web page said that it was due back in Japan on January 30th. That means it takes about 20 days to get across the sea.

Mary took pictures of us entering and leaving the canal. If you look closely, you can see that there are 50, maybe 100 ships waiting to get through. It would be interesting to do some research to know how long it takes an average ship to get through the canal. Put differently, I wonder how long they must sit outside the canal before they get into it.

I've not looked at the schedule, but I think we're in the Pacific for more than a month now. It might actually be two months. As they write this, we are off the coast of Nicaragua heading towards Costa Rica.

Going through the Panama Canal is going to be one of the highlights of our trip. It won't be the highest of highlights, but it will be in the top five.

By the time we got out of the canal, both Mary and I were starving. We'd only eaten a little breakfast nine hours earlier. Mary wanted to go to a make-up demonstration of some sort at 4:30. We got cleaned up and went down to the 6th floor. Wandering through the ship the other day I saw a canned bourbon drink. I will have to get the exact name of it, but it was something like sparkling bourbon. Of course, I wanted to try it so on the way to the 6th floor I got one to try. We were early for the makeup demonstration so I drank the sparkling bourbon. It wasn't bad, but it was a long way from good. They have other options, which I will try over the course of the trip. Mary noticed that there was a table outside one of the little shops. They were selling Panama Canal T shirts. We went over there and bought two T shirts - One for me, and one for the T-shirt quilt. While Mary was at her makeup demonstration I was listening to a guitar duo that was playing down a floor. I recorded the song which I will try to put up on the website too. Anyway, they were pretty good. The make up demonstration only took about 20 minutes. We headed to dinner.

We decided to sit by ourselves in the premium section. I ordered a Merlot which turned out to be not very good. For an appetizer, I had a cabbage salad and yellow pea soup. Again, I'm always trying new things. Both of my appetizers were pretty good. Mary had beef satay. She said it was good. I had red snapper in some red cabbage sauce. The fish was very good. Mary had her chicken dish. My second glass of wine was a red blend which I think I've had before. It was pretty good. Because it had been a long day and I was tired and I had not eaten a lot until that point, I only drank half of it. I didn't want to fall asleep or worse get drunk. I must be slowing up in my old age. For dessert I had my gouda and Brie on crackers. Mary had a fruit dish of some sort. We shared a small piece of Key Lime Pie. The pie was excellent. I could have eaten the whole darn thing - the entire pie, not the slice.

We left dinner thinking that we were going to go to the Casino to enter a slots tournament. It turns out you had to have qualified in the afternoon in order to play at night. We then decided to go to the theater to see a comedian. It was 30 minutes before the comedian was supposed to go on, but all the seats were taken in the theater. We took a slow stroll back to the room. We were back by about 8:00 or 8:30. We started to watch the Ohio State and Texas football game. We were in bed by 10:00. It had been a long but very eventful day.